Charcoal Drawings, Green Pencils, and Eleventh Birthdays
by rosebud1000
Summary: It's a good thing his mother was able to go to Diagon Alley yesterday: the last few pages of his sketchbook were dirty, and he desperately wanted a clean one fore this drawing. If only he could coloured pencils, too.
1. Part One

**Written for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.**

 **The Insane House Challenge: 511. Action - Drawing**

 **The 365 Prompts Challenge: 240. Relationship - Best friends**

 **Warnings: Contains slight implication of abuse**

 **WC: 964**

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Charcoal Drawings, Green Pencils, and Eleventh Birthdays

He felt the cold coins pressed against the palm of his hand, and a crumpled paper note. His mother's hand pulled away from his, and he stared with wide eyes at her retreating back, then opened his hand to see what it was. A sickle and a ten pound note. Good. She'd been able to go to Diagon Alley, and long enough to have some of the money turned Muggle for him. The summer sun was beginning to rise out his window, and pushed the curtains back so he could see better.

Carefully, he pushed the silver coin to the back of his drawer, hidden amongst socks and underwear. He had knuts and sickles, but no galleons. They were harder to hide, and of more value to Muggles. When he went to Diagon Alley next month to get Hogwarts supplies, he'd get a galleon. He'd be able to walk down the street without worrying about being home soon; he could marvel at the magic and wonder at the items in the apothecary.

In the back of the drawer he also found a few last bits of Muggle money. A one pound coin and twenty pence. Eleven-twenty was sure to buy what he wanted: a new sketchbook and eraser. He only had a few pages left in the one he'd gotten two months ago, and they were smeared with charcoal. Good, clean pages was just what he needed for this next drawing. It would be special.

He reached into closet, finding halfway decent clothing. He slipped into jeans that ended just above his ankles and a blue t-shirt one size too big so he'd be able to wear it longer. He didn't know how much money his mother got from the alley when she went, but he knew it couldn't be much. Anything she bought him was made to last.

Once arrived at the store, a cold, cement-floored hidden shop in the neighbourhood nearby, stifling with the summer heat, he went straight to the shelf he wanted. It was host rows of paper books, neatly packaged charcoal pencils, and erasers. He found the sketchbook, the same one he always bought, and a single eraser. Nine pounds for the book, one for the eraser. He had one pound and twenty pence left.

As he neared the front of the shop, a display of coloured pencils caught his eye. They were being sold separately, in a plastic grid with each hole holding a different colour. When he could, he would buy a pack of colours, neat in a tin container, all thirty-six colours. He normally didn't buy them; he only had once. But is was for her birthday, and he did have enough money… he plucked up a pencil named 'emerald green.' Perfect.

He returned home shortly, purchases clutched tight in his arms. The clean, unmarked pages were too pretty to risk harm to, the coloured pencil too valuable to risk losing. On his dresser, he found the handful of charcoal pencils he owned- a birthday gift from her, four months before. He was surprised at how long they were lasting. He hadn't even used half of them. A metal pencil sharpener completed his collection of supplies, and he laid them out on the floor to draw.

He started with the round oval of a face, and slowly filled in the rest, till he had just the eyes to draw. He squinted as he traced the almond shapes, as perfectly symmetrical as he could, and eyelashes fanning outwards, ending with the brilliant emerald green.

It wasn't perfect, of course. The jaw should have been more obvious, the shadows more realistic, but he was only eleven years old. But he didn't know that. He'd never seen an art museum, and he was certainly a better artist than most children his age. Drawing, however, was far from his favourite thing. Hunting for hunks of clay by the creek that ran through the park, he was able to mold. To feel what he was working with, that it really was _something_ , not just charcoal smeared on paper. Modeling, still was not what he longed for.

He longed to brew a potion. To watched it change from one colour to the next with each stir, to add the meticulously prepared ingredients with the just-right timing, and then let it simmer. To make something not just for himself, not just for his best (albeit only) friend's birthday, but to make it to help. To help his mother, or his friend, or even her wretched sister. But to make something tangible and real, that would do more than be something to gawk at hanging on wall or displayed on a table.

When he gave it to her the next day, she was delighted. She clutched the paper, with charcoal smeared in the best way he could think to smear it, with the bright emerald green eyes, and thanked him. Her very real not-pencil eyes lit up, and he realised he should have chosen a darker colour. She tucked a loose strand of very real not-charcoal hair behind her ear and suggested they go to the creak and hunt for clay.

He agreed, and they spent the afternoon pinching the thick mud into shapes and leaving it into the sun to bake, children screaming on the playset behind them all the while. And then her sister came to make her come home ("So much mud on your hands, oh, well. You can wash it off inside. Come on, you don't want to miss your cake, do you?") so they hid their creations in the bushes, where only the squirrels would find them.

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 **Hi! Thanks for stopping by my story. I just couldn't help writing a Lily-centric sequel to this, so that should be up as a second chapter sometime soon. I will warn it: it will be written in a different style (with names and dialogue). You might not want to read it, it's up to you. I find this to be a good ending, but then I got the idea, and I really like thinking that Lily didn't completely hate Severus when she died, sooo...**

 **Anyways, that you again for reading, and please review!**


	2. Part Two

Lily hated packing. She had to pack all her things, and she hated it. No amount of _Wingardium Leviosa's_ could do the job for her, so she was stuck taking each object one by one and stuffing it into its respective box. She'd thrown away quite a few items by now, and had most of it packed, but she was leaving in two days to move into an apartment with Alice, and needed to finish soon. She hadn't even bothered mentioning the idea of living with James. No way would her parents like that, despite her having shared a dorm with him all year. Not that she minded living with Alice. It was just that she already knew how to live with James, and now she would have to re-learn how to live with someone.

So here she was, packing her things, long red hair tied into a messy ponytail, wand stuck in her pocket, and trying to not break a lightbulb. Eventually, she gave up the safe packing of the breakable item and put a charm on it, placing in between the taken-apart pieces of the lamp it belonged to. Exhausted and hungry for lunch, she sat down on her bed. Maybe she could get James to go someplace.

She pulled a small mirror off her dresser, stared into, watching her own reflection. It was, as of now, her best way to contact James, and also the gift he'd given her for her eighteenth birthday last week. She rubbed her hand over it, marveling again at the simple fact that there were no fingerprints. A moment later, James' face appeared.

"Can't talk now, Sirius is-" He was cut off as large water balloon was hurtled toward him, wetting his hair and dripping down the mirror. "Pelting me with those things. Will you try not to break my mirror?!" he yelled, and Sirius' response faded as James tucked the mirror into the safety of his pocket.

Lily laughed. She'd already seen - and participated in - one of Sirius' water fights, and didn't blame James for not letting her talk. Apparently, there was a very affective and probably illegal water balloon charm Sirius knew and refused to share.

Resigned to waiting for James, Lily went back to packing. She'd already packed most of what she wanted, save a few photographs that were reserved for the top of the boxes, the safest place to pack them. Lily hunted around the room for anything she'd missed, and moved her dresser from the wall just to be sure.

A crumpled piece of paper had been wedged in the small space. Lily picked it up, careful. It was a drawing. She'd tried to throw it away, in the summer after fifth year, no doubt. She'd gone on a tirad, throwing away and smashing whatever he'd given her, till none of it was left. She must have missed the waste basket with this one. For some reason, she hadn't ripped it. And now she was left with the last survivor of a long-dead, massacre of a friendship. And for some reason, she couldn't bring herself to throw it away.

The too bright green eyes stared back at her, the drawing looking a lot less proportionate than she remembered it. When he gave it to her, she thought it was the best drawing ever, better than anything she'd ever drawn, better, even, than Petunia, who was quite older and more experienced at the proper use of coloured pencil and crayon. The hair was really just a hair-shaped blob, lacking vertical lines for texture. The eyelashes stuck up to much, the eyes themselves were rather large, and the lips weren't symmetrical. But yet, she couldn't throw it away.

So she packed it, tucking it beside the lamp, hidden from view. And though she didn't know it at the time, she never threw it away. Even when she was married, she kept it in the pocket of a coat she never wore, and it was buried in her ruined house, between a fallen bed table and broken floorboards.


End file.
